Results for America: Invest In What Works
Results for America, an initiative of America Achieves, will improve outcomes for young people and their families by helping ensure taxpayer dollars are invested strategically with a rigorous focus on data, evidence and better results, and discouraging continued support of programs that consistently fail to achieve measurable outcomes.
New Directions
Over the last several years, government at all levels has taken critical steps to change the way taxpayer dollars are invested to ensure limited resources are driven toward high-impact solutions that get results. To significantly improve outcomes for young people and their families in the context of constrained resources and mounting demands, federal government should identify and invest in "what works," and be a catalyst for, and funder of, effective and innovative solutions that produce greater social impact.
This approach has a strong history of bipartisan support. President George W. Bush's Administration put a priority on improving the performance of federal programs and encouraged more rigorous evaluations to assess their effectiveness. The Obama Administration has built on this effort by supporting an increasing number of evidence and evaluation-based policies and programs. Mayors and governors from both parties across the country are also increasingly using data and evidence to steer public dollars to more effectively address needs in their communities and states.
Results for America's Agenda
America Achieves/Results for America will help drive public resources toward innovative solutions that are evidence-based, performance-driven and competitively selected and away from programs that consistently fail to achieve results.
Specifically, Results for America will:
- Develop new policy ideas to underscore government's role as an investor in and catalyst for data-driven, evidence-based solutions to improve outcomes for young people and their families;
- Encourage federal, state and local governments to adopt tools to drive public resources toward what works; and
- Develop a bipartisan constituency and active champions for this approach among government leaders, and communicate powerful success stories across all levels of government.
Founding and current funders for this work include the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and Open Society Foundations.
News
- Using Data to Improve the Performance of Workforce Training, report published with The Hamilton Project
- Building on Recent Analyses in Evidence-Based Policymaking, report published with The Hamilton Project
- Michele Jolin Praises Senate Budget for Putting Results First
- America Achieves - Results for America Statement on Sequestration Deadline
- Melody Barnes and John Bridgeland op-ed in support of Investing in What Works
- U.S. Senator Landrieu Supports Invest in What Works
- Article in Youngstown Vindicator on Social Innovation Fund-supported program providing job opportunities to the poor
- Los Angeles Workforce Innovation Fund op-ed in support of evidence-based funding in workforce development programs
- U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu floor statement in support of evidence-based funding
- Former Bush Administration Official op-ed highlighting support for evidence-based funding in Bush and Obama administration
- Office of Management and Budget memo on the use of evidence in the FY14 federal budget
Policy Recommendations
- America Achieves-Results for America Position Paper
- America Achieves-Results for America Recommendations for President Obama's Second Term
- America Achieves-Results for America letter to Office of Management and Budget in support of evidence-based funding
- Policy Recommendations for DOL
- America Achieves - Results for America policy recommendations to the Department of Education
- Fact sheets on America Achieves-Results for America Policy Priorities
Publications
You can also now follow all of our work on Twitter at @Results4America. Click here to follow us on Twitter.
